OSLO, Norway (AP) – We hear them everywhere – at sporting events like the soccer World Cup, during visits by foreign dignitaries, at national day celebrations around the globe. But anybody listening closely will notice national anthems are rarely odes to peace and harmony.

In fact, war or even outright savagery are often the common thread.

The World Cup final may have ended with a head-butting and a point-blank penalty shootout, but it started with the martial strains of France’s “La Marseillaise” and Italy’s “Song of the Italians.”

“Form your battalions! Let’s march, let’s march. Let an impure blood water our furrows!” the French players sang. “Let us band together, Ready to die! Italy has called!” chanted the Italians.

Other countries have their own belligerent lyrics. Sometimes citizens, used to singing only the first or second verse about patriotism and their beautiful country, are barely aware of the more sinister messages of later verses.

Danes sing of splitting the heads of Swedes, Argentines of dying gloriously for the nation, the Vietnamese of stepping over the bodies of their enemies.

Sverre Lodgaard, director of the Oslo-based Norwegian Instate of Foreign Affairs, said many anthems are born of a decisive moment in a nation’s history. All too often, those include bloodshed.

“National awareness grows most strong at critical moments,” he said. “I think many, even most, of the nations we see today were born out of war.”

Even though now-friendly neighbors Sweden and Denmark haven’t fought so much as a skirmish in almost two centuries, Danes still gloat in song over splitting the skulls of Swedes in 1644.

“King Christian stood by the lofty mast, In mist and smoke; His sword was hammering so fast, Through Gothic (Swedish) helm and brain it passed,” says one of Denmark’s two official anthems.

Danes are not alone in their ancient grudge against the now militarily neutral and devoutly peaceful Sweden, which hasn’t fought a war since 1814 but was once a major European power. A rarely sung verse in the Polish anthem proclaims: “After the Swedish annexation; To save the fatherland; We shall return by sea.”

Norway, the home of the Nobel Peace Prize and a global peacemaker, has an anthem that mainly hypes the Nordic nation’s rugged beauty. But further down, a seldom sung verse also mentions the Swedish enemy, with “farmers sharpening their axes” to meet them in battle.

It’s not just in Europe that nations sing of war.

The U.S. national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner adopted by Congress 1931, describes the 1814 battle by Americans to hold Fort McHenry against the attacking British fleet.

Its describes “rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,” and in a later verse, “the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion.”

In Mexico, the national anthem gives the impression that citizens remain ready to grab a rifle and leap into saddle at the slightest threat.

“Mexicans, at the cry of war, prepare the steel and the steed, and may the earth shake at its core to the resounding roar of the cannon,” goes the chorus.

Not that the British sound as if they could be pushed around. Their anthem has an enjoinder to “scatter our enemies and make them fall!” The Irish, with equal determination, sing: “We’re children of a fighting race, That never yet has known disgrace.”

The Argentines take a similar view, singing “Let us live crowned with glory, Or swear to die gloriously.”

The world’s most populous nation, China, seems to want to make that clear that they have enough people to scare off any enemy: “Arise! Arise! Arise! We are millions strong with hearts that beat as one! Brave the enemy’s gunfire, march on.”

Some countries do pick anthems along more peaceful lines. The anthem that neutral Switzerland made official in 1981 describes the moment “when the Alps glow bright with splendor.”

“That’s not surprising,” said Lodgaard. “The Swiss haven’t fought a war in something like 500 years, which is remarkable.”

Their neighbors, the Austrians, are on the same track with the anthem they chose in 1947, which praises a “land of mountains, land on the river, land of fields, land of spires.”

In war-torn Afghanistan, the proposed new national anthem has an almost pessimistic ring: “So long as a single Afghan breathes; There will be this Afghanistan.”

In Iraq, where there is still sporadic fighting more than three years after the U.S.-led invasion, the not yet officially adopted anthem praises the beauty of the country, but also proclaims: “The youth will not get tired. Their goal is independence, or they die. We rather drink from death, than be slaves to the enemy.”

Even though Japan has fought its share of wars, including World War II, its anthem simply states the wish their emperor “Ten thousand years of happy reign.”

The Bolivians sum up what citizens of many nations really do hope for in the future: “The martial turmoil of yesterday; And the horrible clamor of war; Are followed today, in harmonious contrast, By sweet hymns of peace and unity.”